Wisden Obituary
Newton-Thompson, Christopher Lawton, MC, died in Cape Town on January
29, 2002, aged 82. Although born in London, he was a fifth-generation South African on his father's side and was educated there before going up to Cambridge in 1937. He earned a game against the West Indians with a "brilliant display of all-round hitting" in the 1939 Seniors' Match. He scored eight in each innings - Learie Constantine uprooted his off stump in the first after Newton-Thompson had the temerity to hook his slower ball for six - and caught George Headley at the wicket for 103. It was his only first-class game. He captained Cambridge at rugby and played a wartime international for England. His brother, Ozzie, was a cricket and rugby Blue at Oxford after the war and an England rugby international. Christopher Newton-Thompson won his MC as a tank commander in Italy. As befits the son of an English suffragette, who was related to the political Chamberlain family and herself was elected mayor of Cape
Town, he became prominent in the anti-apartheid movement after returning to South Africa in the late 1950s and was a co-founder of Waterford, the non-racial school established in Swaziland after the government closed St Peter's in Johannesburg, Oliver Tambo's alma mater. Pupils at Waterford included the children of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, along with the future actor Richard E. Grant.
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